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I HEAR YOU'RE RICH

Diane Williams

Diane Williams, "godmother of flash fiction" (The Paris Review), returns with 33 short, brilliant stories, works that capture existence in a few distilled and brilliant lines.
In Williams' stories, life is newly alive and dangerous; whether she is writing about an affair, a request for money, an afternoon in a garden, or the simple act of carrying a cake from one room to the next, she offers us beautiful, and unsettling new ways of seeing everyday life. In perfectly honed sentences, with a sly and occasionally bombastic wit, Williams shows us how any moment of any day can open onto disappointment, pleasure, and possibility. Diane Williams is the founder and editor of the distinguished literary annual, NOON, the ar- chive of which, as well as William's personal literary archive, was acquired in 2014 by the Lilly Library. She is the author of eight previous volumes of short fiction. She lives in New York City.
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Published 2023-08-08 by Soho Press

Comments

I would describe Williams as the writer who saved my life - or my soul, if one believes such a thing exists... [Williams'] stories, many no longer than a page, suggest that what is left unsaid between people remains more powerful than what they have the capacity to articulate. Although Williams studied with Gordon Lish (and before that, with Philip Roth), her minimalism is distinctive for its sublimity and its spirituality, its ability to evoke the laws of a world apart.

Not a single moment of the prose, here, is what you expect, and even the ordinary is, in the context created by Diane Williams, no longer ordinary: it is fresh, happy and peculiar - or is it we who are refreshed, happy and more peculiar than before after reading her?

Diane's music play list on Largehearted Boy: In her own words, here is Diane Williams's Book Notes music playlist for her story collection I Hear You're Rich Read more...

Williams delights... What a treat! Life is rendered immediate and fresh through her eyes as she takes on the simplest of subjects - affairs, a request for money, the act of carrying a cake - with precision and gusto. Read more...

Stories that offer glimpses into the mundane and exhilarating beauty of everyday life. Read more...

Williams's blend of precision and understatement make her insights on her characters' fears and limitations cut deeply while leaving the stories open to interpretation. This will leave readers aching in all the best ways. Read more...

This book will rewire your brain.

More than 30 mesmerizing short stories about life's moments both big and small, narrated in the trademark style of Diane Williams, short story writer and founder of the annual lit journal NOON. Lithub claims these stories by the Godmother of Flash Fiction (per The Paris Review) are "guaranteed to shift the world around you, if only for a moment." *A Tertulia staff pick for August. Read more...

Williams can do more with two sentences than most writers can do with two hundred pages.

[Williams] writes an unmistakable type of story: short, tightly wrought, each sentence a small masterpiece a three-act play in miniature. Read more...

Full of funny, libidinal and invigorating enigmas... Readers who love the arresting phrase, the surprising word, will gravitate to her... It's perfect to leave on the bedside table, to be consulted before one's dreamlife begins.